


Telling Aunt Shaw

by dustd



Category: North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
Genre: Canon - Book, F/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Canon, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-06 21:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18225815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustd/pseuds/dustd
Summary: Edith goes to speak to Margaret after Mr Thornton leaves.





	Telling Aunt Shaw

Edith had been listening for footsteps on the stair, so when they finally came, she made a shushing motion to the baby and moved into shadow. Her plan had been to hide until Mr Thornton had passed, but a creaking floorboard gave her away. Instead, she graciously stepped out, congratulating herself on the polite effort she was making for the sake of her cousin’s unfathomable interest in business.

The usually dour countenance had been lightened by a successful meeting, so much so that Edith was quite taken aback. It was in something of a daze that she replied to his smiling “Good day, Mrs Lennox,” before watching him exit the house into the sunlit street. He seemed transformed from the stiff, serious figure she had thought him. Indeed, even the brown hair at the back of his head was not laying flat and neat as usual before he put on his hat.

Margaret was at the window, but she spun around at her cousin’s step. Edith looked into all corners of the room.

“Where is Henry? I felt sure he must have arrived for you to have been so long. Or have you become an expert in leases and all those dull things yourself, these past weeks?”

“No. No, he never came.”

Edith drifted to the table in her periwinkle skirts, to give a cursory inspection of the papers spread there. Her small curiosity was sated as soon as she saw how stern and numerical their contents were. They gave her no clue as to what had transpired to cause the radiance in a man she previously thought plain.

“Mr Thornton looked very pleased as he left. Do you know, he looked almost handsome. I was quite struck by it! I’ve never seen such a bright, joyous expression on him before.”

She felt sorry for him, for it must be a dreadful existence to be so overtaken by money and commerce, and there was likely little to be joyous about. He had seemed an intelligent and pleasant conversationalist, from what she had cared to notice when he had come to dinner, and according to Henry he was impressive for some reason or another. All the men had regarded him with a kind of fascination in any case, although not every motive could have been the same – her own Captain had never heard of a Mr Thornton or his mill any more than she had.

Baby Maggie gave a whine, and Edith pulled a funny face and stroked her soft little nose to calm her, continuing the bobbing habit that meant she was never completely still.

Margaret, her namesake, had not adjusted her stately posture since that first quick movement at her cousin’s entrance. She stood very still, with her hands clasped behind her back, and her bottom lip held by her teeth. Behind her, the muslin curtains shifted in the warm breeze from the open window, along with a loose wisp of black hair, but she was otherwise motionless.

“Do come out of here, Margaret, it’s so dismal compared to the front of the house. Sholto hasn’t seen you all day, he will think you have left him.”

“Alright. Only…” Her words dried up, leaving her mouth open for a moment before a swallow closed it. “You go, I will be down.”

“Are you quite alright? Is it the heat affecting you?”

The relief of the breeze meant it was not stuffy in the medium-sized room, but a persistent blush suffused her cousin’s sun-kissed complexion nonetheless. And she was so distracted.

Edith’s concerned moue was startled away in the next second by the quickly-stifled, somewhat hysterical, snort of laughter escaping Margaret. One hand flew up to rest against her mouth, the other dropped to her side, something small and yellow held in it.

“Oh, Edith. Do excuse me. There’s no need for concern, I’m… I’m very well.”

“Is that a flower?”

The hand by Margaret’s side lifted, and she looked at what was there intently, as if she was not sure herself. “Yes. Some roses from Helstone.”

“Helstone!”

The last mention Edith had heard of that place had been from Henry, when he had compared the Margaret of now to Margaret as he had known her there. He had called her _“like, and yet more beautiful”_ than that person had been, commenting on her eyes and mouth in a manner Edith had been sure confirmed an understanding between them, before he had denied it yesterday. _“Lips so ripe and red,”_ indeed! But she had not heard the name of Helstone, that beloved home of poor dear Uncle and Aunt Hale, uttered by Margaret for many weeks.

Had she kept the flowers as a talisman? A comfort in her grief, kept secret even from Edith? The blooms did look somewhat dry and shrivelled.

Margaret moved her hand from her mouth to rest flat against her forehead, palm to skin, for a short moment, before taking it away completely. Her eyes were very bright as she brushed over the rose petals with her fingertips, and, now that she was no longer biting or covering her lips, they were in truth plumper than usual, and reddened around the edges.

Edith recalled a soft smile in her recent mind’s eye, broken open by speech to show a flash of neat, white teeth. That mouth, too, had seemed altered, although at the time she had put it down to expression.

She exclaimed at a sudden fearful notion.

Both Margarets looked at her in some surprise.

“Oh, Margaret! No!”

“Whatever is the matter, Edith?”

Maggie began to whimper.

The two of them had been in a closed room together for such a long time, without a chaperone! Edith found herself quite stunned as the cold truth settled within her. Her sensible cousin!

She would give Margaret a chance to explain herself, but first she must sit down. She walked quickly to a chair against the wall, bouncing Maggie on her knee and giving her a cuddle which was reassuring to them both.

“Edith!”

“Margaret. I want you to tell me what has happened here today. And I shall know if you are lying. I am not as silly as you think me.”

At the implication beneath these words, sensed with family intuition, Margaret’s face was set aflame but her expression was firm. She pulled out a chair from the table and sat down herself.

“Mr Thornton and I concluded some business.” She studied her hands in her lap. The flowers she had put to one side, on top of the papers. “With Henry’s assistance, I have found a way to let him remain as my tenant, in charge of Marlborough Mills.”

There was a stretch of silence; Edith even stopped bouncing her knee for the baby.

Margaret’s chin lifted.

“And I am going to marry him.”

 

 

Mrs Shaw had been dozing on the settee, Sholto playing at her feet, until her peace was broken by a startling combination of sounds. Heavy footsteps, a baby crying, and desperate shouts of “Mama! Mama!” were getting nearer to the downstairs drawing room.

“Edith, good lord, what has happened? Is the baby alright?”

When she finally entered the room, her face was stricken with horror. There were tears on her cheeks and she was clutching a confused Maggie to her shoulder.

“Mama! Margaret!”

Mrs Shaw’s expression unconsciously mirrored her daughter’s as she interpreted it to mean some terrible accident or sudden illness had befallen her niece. Edith sobbed around some of her words, but the meaning eventually became clear.

“Margaret has married herself off! For a—As a business agreement!”

Margaret swept in behind her wearing a formidable expression, going straight to the child on the carpet, who was watching all with a dangerously quivering pout.

“I’ve done nothing of the sort, Edith. There really is nothing to be so upset about.” She hoisted Sholto onto her hip, and inhaled sharply with relief at the new figure who had come quickly to see what all the fuss was for. “Newton, could you please take the children to the nursery. Thank you.”

Edith showered her daughter’s unhappy face in damp kisses before handing her over. As soon as the maid was safely away, the children distracted from a scene which was only upsetting them, Edith dropped in anguish to the settee that Mrs Shaw had recently vacated.

“Margaret says she is to marry Mr Thornton!”

“Mr Thornton!”

“She says it is to help him keep his position in that horrible, _dreadful_ place!”

Mrs Shaw cried out, cutting off Margaret’s attempted protests, and had to hastily find a new perch to alight on as hers had now been taken. She clutched a lace-trimmed handkerchief to her mouth.

“Oh, Aunt, really. It is not as dramatic as that. Edith, please, you have taken what I said with the wrong meaning…”

Mrs Shaw spoke up hopefully; “Are you not to marry that man then?”

Margaret turned her gaze upwards as if asking for strength, the corners of her mouth traitorously twitching. Her hands came together in front of her skirts, her shoulders were straight, and she pushed out a short sigh before answering.

“Edith has that part correct, Aunt Shaw. I am to marry Mr Thornton.”

“Oh, Margaret. Why?”

“Precisely, Mama! _Why,_ Margaret? When our own Henry is right under your nose, and a much better match for you!”

“Henry Lennox is no match for me,” Margaret snapped, sending her cousin into freshly wounded peals, although the heat of her words had not been personally intended. Edith had not had such an outburst since before the births of her children, so it was an indicator of how miserable the unfolding events were to her.

“Edith, dear, do calm yourself. Let us listen to what Margaret has to say. Well?”

“We have… grown to care for one another.”

Mrs Shaw studied her niece’s stately dignity, standing in the middle of the room like the accused, noting the softening of her defiant eyes as she thought on the words uttered.

“What’s this about a business agreement?”

“That is unconnected,” she dismissed. “It is only what the meeting was for, and why he was at the house in the first place.”

“Well!” Mrs Shaw adjusted her seat. “It is most convenient for him, to all of a sudden confess a desire for marriage just at the time when _he_ has fallen from grace, and _you_ have recently come into a tidy inheritance!”

Edith’s crying halted abruptly. She stared at Margaret for her reaction, and was convinced she saw sparks.

“Aunt Shaw. I know that it is out of concern for me, but I would ask you not to make such discourteous insinuations. If you must know… he did not even mention marriage.” – She continued speaking over her family’s questioning outcry. – “Rather, it was a mutual confession of feelings that have built up over a very long time. Long before his business losses.”

Here her cheeks turned rather pink.

All at once, something in that countenance was achingly familiar to Mrs Shaw – in a way she had not seen since her sister, this young woman’s mother, had first told her of the man she had fallen in love with, and had chosen to marry against society’s advice.

Margaret was surprised and relieved, a moment later, to be gently embraced.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, they were kissing on and off for at least half an hour. It left a mark.
> 
> I couldn't remember learning anything about the new baby, so I used my own ideas. Thanks for reading!


End file.
